30-minute breadsticks (from scratch!)

I don't shy away from making my own bread, but the time commitment of rising the dough does often mean we don't have it in time for dinner. But last year, I came across Fast, Easy Bread via I'm Topsy Turvy. Fast, Easy Bread offers recipes for homemade bread, rolls, and pizza dough in less than an hour (including baking time!).

Last night, I realized I had no bread in the house to go with my baked ziti (adapted from this baked ziti recipe, but with cottage cheese instead of ricotta and homemade tomato sauce—this is why I'm a slow cook!). If I'd had two hours, I would've made French bread. But I had <30 minutes, so I turned to Fast, Easy Bread and put the fastest of their free recipes to the test: breadsticks.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp SAF-instant premium yeast - (available in FEB's Homemade Pizza Bundle; I use regular yeast)
• 1 tsp Liquid Soy Lecithin - (available in FEB's Homemade Pizza Bundle; I got mine at the grocery store)
• 1 cups hot/warm water

Instructions:
1. Mix dry ingredients, including yeast.
2. Make 1 dimple in dry ingredients with tsp. Squeeze lecithin to fill the dimple. Add water slowly, add 3/4 cup and then the remaining 1/4 cup [I'm bad and just dump the whole thing in, aiming for the lecithin to try to break it up]. Mix for 1 minute and check consistency. The dough mixer should be sticky and pull itself off bowl.
3. Mix/knead in mixer on medium setting for 5 minutes or knead for 5 minutes by hand.
4. Spray counter and hands with cooking spray and knead for a few seconds to form smooth ball.
5. Roll dough out into a circle if using pizza stone or into a rectangle if using a cookie sheet
6. Spray cookie sheet and place rolled dough on sheet or pizza stone. [The recipe says it should rise for 10 minutes but doesn't say when to do that. I recommend doing it here, but I skipped the rising and they turned out fine.]
7. Cut dough down the center and into inch strips
8. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

I'm generally a very slow cook, so I'm the ultimate test for this recipe. But within fifteen minutes I had this:

I skipped rising because their pizza dough recipe doesn't require rising, and I didn't need them much fluffier than that. I left them in the oven for about 20 minutes (getting other things ready for dinner).

Yum!